NEW: NCAA Baseball postseason change

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Stories Summer Login Top Seeding Changes Coming To Tourney NEWS Kendall Rogers - October 6, 2017 mouths

For years, college baseball coaches and fans alike have asked the same question about how the NCAA tournament field is assembled. “If softball can seed the top teams in the tournament 1-16, why can’t baseball?”. That’s the question that has been on everyone’s mind for at least the past decade. It was guaranteed to come up at every State of Baseball press conference in Omaha, and it has always been a topic of discussion at the American Baseball Coaches Association Convention as well. That question no longer needs to be asked, as the NCAA baseball postseason format will include seeding the Top 16 teams and regional hosts in the field of 64 as opposed to just the Top 8 teams that we’re accustomed to, a measure that was approved this past week by the Division I Baseball Committee and subsequently by the NCAA Championship Oversight Committee. “This is a big deal for our sport. We have to continue making the tournament better and by going 1-16 with the top seeds, it makes our tournament more equal to all areas,” Sidwell said. “The committee felt strongly that this was something we should do. There were times when there were particular restrictions on travel, mileage and things like that, but we wanted to grow the game and make the tourney better. “So, now we’re at 1-16, and I think we get more of a true field,” he continued. “We will have true matchups in super regionals for the teams in the Top 16. My biggest thing is looking at our great sport and find ways that we can grow the game and make everything better, whether it’s pace of play or simply tweaking some things in regards to the postseason.” The best news? It’ll start in 2018 and the format will call for 1 vs. 16, 2 vs. 15, and so on in the super regional round. Should one of those seeds get upset in the regional round, the winner of the regional would replace them as that seed and there would not be a reseeding process, a potential future change that many coaches are still in favor of. “This is a great step forward for our sport and long overdue,” TCU coach Jim Schlossnagle said. “College baseball has grown to the point that regionalization of the NCAA tournament should be an afterthought to putting the best possible tournament structure together.”

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